Lazlo Zalezac: Blog

Sandy is a bitch and all of the evil female characters in my story will be named that from hence forth! Yes, I know that is an unfair generalization for those who carry that name, but six days without power is a long time to suffer without the internet.

I'm not complaining though. We didn't have significant damage from the water or the wind, which was good. The fact of the matter was that we were well prepared and didn't have any problems at all. I had lamps and fuel enough to last three weeks, food for a month, and kerosene heater (with CO detectors) to keep nice and toasty through it all. I had a car full of gas and a go-bag packed in case we had to evacuate. I was a boyscout!

I've spent the past two days getting my computers and other equipment checked out in response to the possibility of damage from the electrical surges that came with the power outage. Fortunately, my experience with a lightning strike (when I lost the last chapters of Quatyl) came through with most of my stuff off the grid when the power went down. I will be returning to a regular posting schedule soon.

The past few days have given me insights into how people respond to disasters. It was not pretty. I have lost patience with the incompetent, incapable, and insufferable. I met people who bought generators, but no gasoline to run them. They figured the gas stations would be open. I ran into folks who were shocked that the corner convenience store wasn't open to sell coffee the morning after the storm hit. I heard people trying to find the nearest open burger burner because they didn't any food set aside. These people didn't have any major damage to their places, but were wailing in misery as if they had just lost their first born child.

In a lot of ways, the people here were lucky. I know that a lot of folks lost their homes and I feel for them, but it could have been even worse. The storm could have been stronger. The weather could have been a lot colder. You'd be hearing about people freezing to death or dying from carbon monoxide poisoning by now.

So, I now have material for a story about a crisis. My characters should be so realistic that they won't be credible. To quote one of my neighbors, "I figured the electricity would come back on right after the storm passed. It's been out a whole day already." I avoided that particular individual after the power had been out for more than three days. I don't want to tell her that I'm amazed we have power, telephone, cable tv, and internet just one week after getting hit with a storm that destroyed or severely damaged 85% of the homes in one of the towns less than 5 miles from where we live.


Now we have a Nor'Easter heading our way. That ought to be interesting. Well, I'm ready!

This week I posted a chapter of Betsy. It wasn't the best chapter I've ever written and it wasn't the worst, but it was special. With that post, I finally reached 25MB of text posted on SOL. At about 6 characters per word, that translates to around 4,000,000 words of text.

It probably took typing around 5,000,000 words to get that much worth keeping. I edit a lot, rewrite stuff over and over, and pretty much worry the text to death. Still, errors creep in and no matter how many times I read it, I don't catch them all. Others do. In fact, others catch a lot of errors of mine, but even they miss some.

A good example is in the story Betsy. I know the difference between peddling and pedaling, but I never catch it when I use the wrong one while I'm proofreading it. I think that second d just looks too much like an a. That little upward part of the d is bent over in the a. The only solution is to never have a character who rides a bicycle in any of my future stories.

I've tried not to repeat myself in my stories. I keep trying to find new ways to show the hero that exists in each of us. I'm more successful in some stories than in others, still I do my best. We'll see how I do on the next couple of Megabytes of text.

I hope you've enjoyed what I've posted.

Okay, I blew it. Flagellate me with a wet noodle.

I used the word granted in the universe description in a manner in which people object - some quite strongly. Although the modern interpretation of the phrase 'Rights granted in the Constitution' has come to mean that it is a 'privilege' lent to us by the government -- the phrase is not limited to that interpretation. It also means that these rights are acknowledged as fundamental and are to be maintained (continuously 'given') by any legitimate government established under the Constitution.

The Declaration of Independence lays out quite clearly that the proper role of government is to assure those rights and not take individual liberties away in favor of the 'needs' of the many. I know the Founding Fathers were stating that the partial list of rights acknowledged in the Constitution was not a full list of rights. The idea they were putting forth -- that there are rights given to us by God and were not to be limited by a legitimate government was truly revolutionary.

It is weird that the phrase, 'The rights granted by the constitution are taken for granted,' has individuals who interpret the first use of granted as only meaning 'given as a gift' while accepting the second use of granted as meaning 'given as a fact.'

You can argue that, but I wrote it and I meant the later meaning of granted in both uses -- so there!

Some readers have rightly said that John and Jane Smith are flat and nondescript characters. Yes, they are. They are generic figures who are given plain ordinary names. Jane is not a full figured woman with body parts that will stop traffic. John is not a handsome man who causes women to swoon. They are not described at all. To me that makes sense because they are supposed to represent anybody -- not someone specifically. In fact, they could be you and share all of your hopes and dreams for the future.

John and Jane are not the stars in this universe. They are the road kill by the side of the street, run over by a bureaucratic system with all of the feelings and emotions of a truck. It's the truck that is the main star of this universe. (By the way, you aren't supposed be on the side of the bureaucratic system.)

In one of the next stories in this universe, the question arises as to the rights of search and seizure given to dog catchers. Is it a stupid question? Now the lawyers among us, both licensed and amateur, may know what is the full authority given to a dog catcher in pursuit of a 'criminal' animal or to protect an animal that is being illegally kept. In a very unscientific poll in which I just asked a random collection of people what were the search and seizure powers of a dogcatcher, I received as many answers as people I questioned.

They say that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well, a lot of this stuff isn't law, but regulations that have the effect of law, but aren't law. Some come into existence without fanfare or announcement. I'll accept that we are supposed to do due diligence and investigate what we are allowed to do before we do it. That really sounds good and reasonable. How much time are we to spend on it? Unfortunately, it is becoming a full time job.

Some things you don't even think about, such as, parking a car in front of a friend's house when we visit them. Turns out that in some places it is okay to park a car on the street in front of someone's house during the day, but at dusk it becomes a crime (must be a law to keep vampires away). No signs are posted to that effect. Suddenly, you are paying a $100 ticket.

Do you think I'm making this up? I'm not. That is how I got my first and only traffic ticket. It all started when I helped take someone to a hospital. In hindsight, I should have known that I should have stopped and consulted a lawyer when I parked my car. Unfortunately, I was more concerned with my friend's health than obeying a parking regulation that I had no idea existed. There were other cars parked on the street -- why shouldn't I? They weren't parked there when I got back from the hospital.

It is time for Sean to get his next magic gift and to move on to the adult world of college. It's a chance to introduce new characters, a new environment, and, of course, a new magic gift.

Hope you enjoy the story for what it's supposed to be -- a little bit of fun.

Yesterday morning, I posted the last chapter of Service Society. The feedback has been tremendous. One request that has been made repeatedly is to post it to finestories.com so that folks can share it with others without sending them to a sex story website. Well, I have started to do that. I will post it in units of ten chapters a day over the next seven days.

Normally at the conclusion of a story, I post a few comments about it. I write about my thoughts of the story and the reactions of various readers. I have already done this in a couple of posts, but I will add a few comments here.

A lot of people understood exactly where Dexter was coming from. His life reflected their lives or the lives of people they know. Still others rejected that things had become that bad. The truth -- I think it depends on where you are and what you do for a living.

Dexter's relationship with his family, particularly Janet, was the subject of a lot of emails. I got everything from 'burn the bitch' to 'what an asshole'. Some people particularly hated the chapters dealing with family interactions. A lot of people were rooting for Amber or Samantha as Dexter's new love interest.

Basically, I feel that our ties with family and friends have been sacrificed in our modern society. In most cases it wasn't intentional, but dictated by events and expectations placed upon us. No one asks to work overtime without pay in order to keep their jobs. They'd rather spend their time with friends and family. That's not always possible.

People are social animals with the same emotional needs as cavemen. If you don't want to be alone then there are two choices: forge new relationships or renew the old ones. They are not mutually exclusive choices. Dexter chose to do both, but only after discovering that dropping old relationships didn't make him any happier.

A lot of people felt that the only reason Dexter was able to succeed was because he got a lot of money from his company. Well, the website was earning money and that is what he lived on. It could have been his only source of money throughout the story. A website with a hundred thousand visitors a month can earn millions.

However, I felt that having access to a large amount of money was necessary for the story. Why? There was a good reason beyond punishing the company for which he initially worked.

Without money, Dexter was basically a small guy who was successfully challenging a large hostile system. That was good and could have ended the story right there. I mean, we all like a good David vs. Goliath story.

However, I felt that a role model for how the system could be run in a less hostile fashion was necessary. Who better than Dexter, an engineer who wanted to make products that made people's lives better and viewed his profession as serving mankind? I couldn't think of anyone and I was writing the story.

Having the money to create the coffeemaker company was part of allowing him to be that role model. He did the simple things to improve the workplace -- things like delegating authority and responsibility, taking the time to perform the proper level of engineering before releasing a product, providing an appropriate work environment, and looking out for the welfare of his employees. Revolutionary concepts? No, not at all.

One last comment. Dexter's story started on a Tuesday morning and ended on a Tuesday morning. I wanted to contrast those two mornings, pointing out where we are and where we could be. In the beginning, he was encased in his corporate warrior gear - work clothes, blackberry, cell phone, and other weapons of corporate warfare. In the end, he was nude and open to the light of the sun. A move from a cold life to one filled with warmth despite the fact that a chill hangs in the air.

I will be taking a small vacation while I prepare my next story. Sometimes a new story, like Service Society, will consume my ability to write and at the expense of other stories. I'm engaged in writing such a story now. It's just part of the creative process.

One last thing-- requests about stories. Magic will be completed soon -- the last three chapters are in my brain, but not on computer. I still am not satisfied with my attempts to reproduce the lost chapters of The Quatyl and I'm thinking about writing a conclusion chapter that leaves open the possibility of a continuance with James Junior. It is highly unlikely that I will return to the John Carter Universe although I have thought about a Bard's tale set in that universe (no promises). There will be a Damsels in Distress story in the future -- the first three chapters are written, but I'm blocked on the details of the adventure. Submarine Dreams is in process, but going slowly. I'm pulling together a Magus in Love story set in the Solutions Incorporated world.